Beaver (Castor canadensis)

How the beaver helped shape the world

The world would not have been the same without beavers. Each and every species on earth has a certain influence on its surroundings, but the influence of some is disproportionally large, especially when their size and abundance is taken into the equation. The beaver most certainly is one of them. It is known as both a keystone species and an ecosystem engineer. The engineering part is quite obvious, because the beaver is mostly known for the amazing feat of building enormous dams of large trees with just their muscle power and tremendously strong self-sharpening teeth (the stump in the background is clear evidence of that, bon appetite!). A 15 cm (6") thick tree crashes to the ground after just five minutes of gnawing. Long before humans even started contemplating the use of simple dams, let alone the modern hydroelectric variety that destroyed so many natural values worldwide the past decades, beavers already used them to control the flow of water for their convenience in many river systems in the Northern Hemisphere.

The term "keystone species" means that this species has a great influence on the species composition and physical appearance of an ecosystem. Obviously this is true of the beaver. After a dam is built, in a river, its flow is obstructed so that a pond is created upstream from it. Species that depended on fast flowing water will die out or move and be replaced by species typical for lakes rather than streams. The area around the dam is further changed by the almost industrial speed with which trees are felled. One single beaver can gnaw down up to 200 trees a year, which makes it is easy to see that the most favoured tree species will disappear very soon and that the less attractive ones will take over that part of the land. The presence of a beaver in general leads to a more diverse natural system, but there can be negative effects as well. For example, some rivers have been known to be so completely blocked by dams that salmon would no longer be able to swim upstream to reach their spawning grounds.

However large the beaver's influence on the natural world is because of all that, its influence on a completely different front makes that look insignificant. Because of this large rodent, wars have been fought, borders have been established and re-established and whole cultures were destroyed. It is fair to say that the human history of a whole continent and, more or less indirectly, of a large part of the world has been shaped around a 40-60 pound weighing animal which, to most people, looks rather uninteresting. 

We have to go back to the 15th century to understand all that. In those days, felt hats started becoming fashionable in Europe and by the 1550's every fine gentleman and -woman wanted at least one. By then it was not merely a thing to cover your head with anymore, but a clear sign to the rest of society of your wealth and standing. Not having such a hat was simply not an option. 

At first glance felt may not look much like beaver, but when the rough guardhairs that you see on a life beaver are removed, you get exactly that: a strong, dense and velvety material that looks great on every gentleman's and -woman's head. For comparison, jeans have been popular for a long time, seeing the start of production in large numbers in the 1850's and becoming outright fashion in the 1950's. Still, jeans will have to hold out until the 2150's to break the record that felt hats have set. And so it happened that beavers throughout Europe and Russia were reduced from great engineers to broad-brimmed hats at breathtaking speed. So great was the demand for their fur that the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) was virtually hunted to extinction in Western Europe by the late 1500's and before long they got particularly rare in Scandinavia and Russia too.

For a little while it seemed that a change of fashion was necessary simply because there were no beavers left to sustain the industry. But, just in time, a whole new source of raw material was found when North America was discovered and the frontier started moving westward. The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is a different species, but the fur served just as well for the fashion industry. It is now estimated that at least 10 million beavers lived in Canada alone at the time that the Europeans arrived. In the whole of North America estimates range from 60 to 400 million. For the bottomless pit called Europe, this must have looked like a seemingly endless supply and no time was wasted in utilising this bounty. Nothing was spared to bring as many beaver furs back to Europe as fast as possible.

To really understand the impact of beavers on this part of human history, it is important to know that the beaver fur was no by-product of the westward movement of the frontier, but that the frontier moved as fast and violently as it did because of the beavers! North America in the early days were not much more to the world than "Fur Country". And among all the kinds of fur, beaver fur was the most wanted one. Without beavers, Alaska may well have been Russian now. The United States may not have become the superpower that they are now. Who knows, maybe the continent would still have been mostly in the hands of North American natives. It's extremely interesting to think about what the world would look like if that would have been the case. But alas for beavers and North American natives, history unfolded itself as it did.

Because fur traders were at the forefront of the frontier, they were often the first Europeans the North American natives would see. In the beginning the contact was peacefully enough and the natives often allowed the traders on their hunting grounds and would even help them as guides with their great knowledge of the natural world. However, this contact was the beginning of the end for the native's way of life. In pre-contact days, North America's First Nations would in generally hunt only as much as they needed and used as much of the prey as possible. After all, why would you waste time on taking more than you need for your own people if the surplus just would not be used anyway? Granted, there was trade between some bands and tribes, but this too mostly was just to acquire necessaries of life and not for making a profit. Money was not only something they did not need, it simply was not there. This is an essential difference between the residents and the newcomers, because profit certainly was one of the things the Europeans were after. Another essential difference was that the natives saw themselves as just another part of the natural system while Europeans in general had distanced themselves further and further from nature during the centuries until they perceived themselves as superior to any other living creature. They therefore did not have any scruples about simply taking whatever they wanted, rather than thinking about what the impact of these actions would be on the natural system. These differences were bound to lead to trouble.

With more and more Europeans finding their way into the newly found lands, the fur trade became more established and organised too. Rather than just having white hunters and trappers roaming the land guided by natives, the traders started offering the natives goods if they would hunt for them and bring the furs to a trade post. This was not an instantly successful strategy, simply because the natives did not have a real need of what the Europeans had to offer them. However, it did not take too long to find the sort of goods that would win at least some natives over. The relatively impact-free way of life that had lasted for millennia (some debate is still going on about when the first people set foot on the Americas, but 20.000-30.000 years is an often-used estimate) was distressingly easily changed after all.

Among those goods were firearms and firewater. The guns however were not only handy for shooting fur-bearing animals. For one thing, now that some bands and tribes did have firearms and others did not, conflicts between them turned particularly ugly, so firearms soon became very desirable objects. The most effective way to get natives to hunt and to keep coming back for more work however probably was alcohol. Unfamiliar with alcohol and its addicting effect, nor with how to modify its use, the natives soon found themselves in dire trouble. In many places a once proud people was reduced to an addicted and unorganised lot that lost touch with their roots and old way of life and that depended on Whiteman for more booze.

It goes much too far to explain the full effect of the fur trade on North America's First Nations and the text so far naturally is extremely generalising. However, it is clear that this was the beginning of the end of their way of life. All this was followed by suppression of and outright warfare against bands and tribes that resisted the way in which the newcomers took over their land. There was no stopping them with so much business already going on and so much profit already made. The signing of treaties eventually was supposed to solve the problems between First Nations and newcomers but all too often it turned out that these documents said other things than what was explained to the mostly illiterate natives. In many cases the bands and tribes thought that they were only promising peace and cooperation, while on paper they gave Europeans the rights to all their lands in exchange for small reserves on which they would have to live the rest of their lives. Until this day, the first people of North America are the most discriminated inhabitants of North America with the least rights. No wonder that the drinking problem continues to this day in many reserves. The following quote from an article from the North Carolina Wesleyan College should help explain that further.

"The main problem with not having nation-state status is that no other country in the world will do business with you. Indigenous peoples are not allowed to have embassies, diplomats, or business representatives. They have no power to make trade agreements, collect tax revenue, enter into political alliances, or be involved in immigration. Investors and corporate firms have to be enticed to come in and set up business (a casino, for example) where it is hoped some of the revenue will stay in the community. What is more common, however, are business rip-offs and exploitation. No economic development is allowed at all unless the indigenous people own the land, which in most cases they don't because of unresolved legal battles or the land being held as a trust for them by some government entity. When land is held in trust (a "protectorate" arrangement), banks will not loan money on it, and the only thing to do is lease it out for development to the very same government entity that "protects" it for you. This ensures the exploitation of both land and human resources. Although this only describes some of the economic problems, there are political problems as well. The struggle of indigenous peoples is the struggle for sovereignty and the right to self-determination."
source: North Carolina Wesleyan College

Is it not truly amazing what a 40-60 pound rodent, or rather the greed for its fur, can cause?

The beaver itself in North America has recovered better from all this than the natives have and arguably with more help from the European newcomers. By the end of the 19th century, beavers were virtually extinct in the eastern half of the United States and the west and Canada were going in that same direction. But especially since the second half of the 20th century the decline in beaver populations finally led to public concern. Regulations for hunters were set up and reintroduction programs were started to bring beavers back to parts of their former range where they had been exterminated. It is estimated that there currently are 6-12 million beavers in North America. This is a great achievement for early conservationists, but if not for the unusual adaptability of beavers, it would not have been such a success.

Image number: 2007_ASP5242AWMC